International
Women's Day CommemorationAround
the World Women are Fighting for Their Lives!Statement
by Emma Allen, Radical Women Organizer, Portland chapter

March
8, International Women's Day, honors working-class women's
campaigns for safe job conditions, decent pay, and the right to vote,
learn, and live free from discrimination, violence, war, fear and
want. Founded by socialists over 100 years ago, the holiday's
rebellious spirit lives on as we carry forward the fight against
repressive forces.

Women
across the globe are taking to the streets
to battle for control over their bodies and their lives. Massive
protests erupted throughout South Asia when a medical student in New
Delhi died after a brutal gang rape on a public bus. Demonstrators
called for tougher rape laws, police reforms, and for the government
to address the rampant harassment of women.

Meanwhile,
Egyptian women combat systematic and often state-sanctioned sexual
assaults in public spaces and at protests. Female activists and their
male allies formed groups to defend women and called demonstrations
to challenge the Morsi government to act against the harassment and
rapes. At a recent march in Cairo, some women brandished kitchen
knives and batons to show they planned to defend themselves if
attacked.

Taliban
thugs in Pakistan tried to kill 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai for
advocating schooling of girls. The attempt failed, and ignited a
global protest in support of female education. And when Irish
Catholic doctors forced Savita Halappanavar to bleed to death rather
than abort her miscarried fetus, thousands of reproductive rights
supporters reacted in outrage. They marched in Dublin chanting "Never
Again!" and demanded a public investigation and legal abortion.

U.S.
teachers, a predominantly female workforce, are also rising up. A
Chicago strike to defend public education electrified unionists
across the country. Teachers in the Northwest launched a boycott of
the standardized Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) test, sparking a
national discussion about the content of quality education. Immigrant
women battled xenophobia and government repression.
Feminists fought anti-abortion legislation and raised an outcry about
Republican politicians spewing sexist, unscientific information about
rape and pregnancy.

From
Lisbon to Athens, Madrid to Dublin, women were an integral part of
strikes against austerity measures that balance the capitalists'
economic crisis by cutting the pensions and living standards of
working people. Women
bear the brunt of new austerity measures in the United States. On
March 1, Democrats and Republicans let "sequestration" go into
effect. These massive budget cuts slash
social services and devastate poor people and barely surviving
workers.
For example, 600,000 mothers and children will be denied food aid and
70,000 children will be dropped from Head Start. At least 125,000
families will lose housing vouchers and 900,000 fewer adults will
receive critical health care. Four million people will have their
unemployment benefits cut by 10 percent. Service cut backs will also
throw many women and people of color out of work as they occupy the
majority of public sector jobs.

Democrats
and Republicans point fingers at each other, but all of them are
culpable. The proposal for cuts originated with President Obama and
both parties agreed to it with much talk about dealing with a debt
"crisis." Despite flowery words, the actions of both parties
promote the interests of Corporate America.

This
manufactured economic crisis was not caused by funding public needs,
but by decades of corporate giveaways, bailouts and a war economy.
From 1979 to 2007, wealth
for the top 1 percent increased by 275 percent
while income barely moved for earners in the bottom fifth. That's
capitalism — a for-profit economy driven by the needs of
corporations and the desires of the wealthy, at the expense of the
health of the majority of humans.

Turn
outrage into strategy for victory. To
achieve women's liberation, we must tackle the root cause of
inequality: capitalism. The for–profit economic system demands
women's exploitation — as unpaid caretakers in the home and
underpaid workers on the job. Sexual violence, racism, and attacks on
reproductive rights serve to reinforce women's second-class status.
The capitalist economy survives because of the oppression and
destruction of people who are female, of color, workers, queer,
young, elderly, sick, or in need. It does not deserve saving.

Feminists
can infuse revolutionary politics into community organizing, instead
of settling for the scraps that Democrats and Republicans offer.
While battling specific budget cuts and attacks on women and workers,
we can also build a movement for a sane socialist society run by
working people where wealth, power, art and leisure are shared and
the state’s role is to help people survive and thrive.

Radical
Women members are immersed in grassroots organizing, from fighting to
save City College in San Francisco and Crenshaw High School in Los
Angeles, to campaigning for state-funded childcare in Washington
State, and mobilizing strike support in numerous cities.